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Center for Supply Networks and Analytics

Excellence in research and education in supply chain management and business analytics.

The Center for Supply Networks and Analytics is a newly formed center of excellence dedicated to research and education in the fields of supply chain management and business analytics. The mission of the Center is to be a leading source of knowledge creation and dissemination in supply chain and analytics.

The Center’s research activities and agenda seek to enhance the body of knowledge related to all major facets of supply chain management and business analytics. These activities culminate in insights targeted at both academic and managerial audiences. The Center will become a premier destination for expertise, in particular for the technology-intensive and advanced manufacturing firms that are central to the ambitions of Rensselaer.

Summary: Building a culture of affordability among key stakeholders in engineering, supply chain, and suppliers is important given the extent of outsourcing that Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s) have done in past years. This session will discuss value engineering best practices, the skills and capabilities that engineers at OEM’s need to be successful, and a question and answer session.

Summary: This event is hosted by the Center for Supply Networks and Analytics at the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Attendees will hear and learn from executives with broad experience in analytics in multiple industries on issues and challenges faced by firms as they adapt to technological shifts. The event will include a panel discussion and Rensselaer supply chain and business analytics capstone project poster presentations.

Summary: The utilization of digital supply chains to manage the “Internet of Things” (IoT) enabled product and services delivery across multiple participants raises fundamental questions concerning invasive surveillance and who owns the data that is gathered.

February 22, 2017 - Watch Video - “Supply Chain Risk Insights Powered By Watson"Speakers: Tom Ward ’86, Cloud and Cognitive Strategist, Enterprise Services, IBM, and Rahul Nahar, Senior Technical Staff Member, Enterprise Services Analytics, Architecture, and Strategy, IBMSummary: Managing global supply chains can be a risky business. The race for leaner supply chains has placed supply chain sites and suppliers in some unstable regions of the world. How do supply chain leaders know when to take costly risk mitigating actions to recover from the impact of a natural event (ie. a hurricane or earthquake) and when can they simply take caution, but no action?

October 26, 2016 - “On-Demand Warehousing and Logistics”Speaker: Jennifer Pazour, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic InstituteSummary: On-demand businesses use internet-based platforms to provide wide-reach visibility into untapped resource capacity. This has the potential to increase resource visibility, utilization, accessibility, and flexibility. We explore the competitive landscape and characteristics of on-demand warehousing and logistics systems, as well as compare and contrast on-demand business models with traditional models.

September 29, 2016 -“Wine Analytics: Fine Wine Pricing and Selection Under Weather and Market Uncertainty”Speaker: M. Hakan Hekimoglu, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management and Business Analytics, Rensselaer Lally School of ManagementSummary: This talk examines research that shows that a wine distributor should always invest in wine futures because it increases the expected profit despite being a riskier asset than bottled wine. The study empirically demonstrates the financial benefits from using this model for a large distributor.

February 17, 2016 - Watch Video - “Developing and Managing Effective Global Supply Chains” Speaker: Dan Ostrosky ’90, Vice President of Supply Chain Management, Triumph GroupSummary: In competitive business environments effective management of global supply chains is critical for firm success. This talk will focus on strategies for building and managing global supply chains to support a network of diverse manufacturing operations. Topics will include: global sourcing strategies, lean supply chain methods, and relationship and category management practices that lead to optimizing total landed costs.

November 18, 2015 - Watch Video - “The Impact of New Product Development and Innovation on Supply Chain Management”Speaker: Lindsey Rappleyea ’13, New Product Development Engineer, W. L. Gore & AssociatesSummary: In our globalized and fast-paced world getting relevant and successful products out the door as quickly and efficiently as possible is key to business success. Concepts like the new product development cycle and disruptive innovation are becoming more essential to success. While they are not new ideas, they take on a newer form in modern industry and are more critical than they ever were before.

October 21, 2015 Video - Watch Video - “Confidence in Chaos: Fortifying Supply Chain Business Continuity Capabilities in an Evolving Risk Landscape”Speaker: Jodie Wright ’10, Senior Associate, Information Protection and Business Resilience Practice, KPMGSummary: In today’s evolving marketplace, supply chain failures are increasingly presenting a strategic challenge for continuing business operations. As a result, more organizations recognize the importance of establishing a business continuity program and developing plans to help mitigate loss and resume production activities in the event of a disaster.

September 23, 2015 - Watch Video - “Integrating Physical and Digital Supply Chains: A Cross-Industry Perspective”Speaker: Peter Vanderminden ’78, Senior Industry Analyst, IoT and Digital Supply Chain, Flatiron StrategiesSummary: While many analysts predict significant growth of IoT over the next five years, it is clear that customers can be expected to walk away if they do not see the value or trust these new digital features of products. This session will provide a cross-industry perspective on how to undertake digital supply chain transformations.

Contact Us

Contact the Center for Supply Networks and Analytics at CSNA@rpi.edu or (518) 276-2035.